Business intelligence

Business Intelligence Tool Business Intelligence Tool The challenging needs of the current times compel the organizations to adapt innovative and latest technologies for the development of their business and attainment of competitive advantages in the market. Business intelligence is one of such technologies; it refers to computer based techniques that are used to identify and extract patterns from business data to facilitate decision making and formulation of effective strategies. Power (2007) stated that business intelligence is also referred to as decision support systems. Staples (2009) explained that business intelligence is considered as the techniques to cut and dice the data to generate reports. One of the available tools for business intelligence reports is SAP Crystal Reports Solution. The main purpose of this tool is to provide a comprehensive and graphical representation of the data to organizations. Organizations can analyze their operational and service performance (with the help of these reports) to identify the weak and strong areas, as well as analyze the industry data to identify opportunities, market trends and threats in the environment. SAP Crystal Reports Solution provides an effective medium to create, securely share and manage data for effective reporting (SAP, n. d.). It is an affordable solution that facilitates faster decisions for the development of business and increased market shares. SAP Crystal Reports Solution offers scalability since it can be increased from a couple of users to 200 employees (working simultaneously), as per need of the organization. The solution encompasses two technologies; SAP Crystals Reports and SAP Crystal Reports Server. SAP Crystal Reports provide the interactivity and viewing capabilities, while the Server provides features to share the reports in an organized manner. Server also provides the conversion of reports into document formats. This is an effective tool that can represent any type of data in graphical format, with minimal design time requirement. The tool provides accessibility to reports and data over the web. The accessibility to data helps the management to make informed and faster decisions. It can be useful to control access to information so that unauthorized personnel are not able to view any sensitive data. The reports can be run automatically and delivered on the basis of schedulers (SAP, n. d.). Such automated reports can be effective to analyze daily, weekly or monthly reports (as per need of the organization) to monitor performance of employees, revenue generation, customer service statistics etc. On a personal level, individuals can enter their service quality data and evaluate their performance on a weekly, monthly or yearly basis. For example, a front desk officer can enter the timestamps for providing service to his customers in a bank. SAP Crystal Reports can show his performance in a graphical format and identify the times when he provided slow service or efficient service to the customers. Overall, this tool can be considered a worthy investment since it caters a diverse range of aspects; graphical reporting, affordability, scalability, security, access control and automated reporting. Herschel and Jones (2005) explained that the main aim of business intelligence is to gather data to provide a basis for analysis; SAP Crystal Reports Solution performs all such required functions effectively and efficiently. Man hours can be reduced for the IT department resources since reports can be designed in minimal time periods. These reports are interactive therefore the managers do not have to be dependent on their IT department for generation of report. Reports can be viewed from different perspectives, such as a revenue report can easily be viewed on accumulated level or regional level. References Herschel, R. T., Jones, N. E., (2005), Knowledge management and business intelligence: the importance of integration, Journal of Knowledge Management, Vol. 9, No. 4, pp. 45-55. Power, D. J., (2007), A Brief History of Decision Support Systems. DSSResources. com, Retrieved from http://DSSResources. COM/history/dsshistory. html.  SAP, (n. d.) SAP Crystal Solutions, Retrieved from http://www. businessobjects. com/product/catalog/xcelsius/demos. asp Staples, S. (2009), Analytics: Unlocking Value in Business Intelligence (BI) Initiatives, CIO, Retrieved from http://www. cio. com/article/489257/Analytics_Unlocking_Value_in_Business_Intelligenc e_BI_Initiatives